Stonewall's Legacy

Thirty years ago this month, police in New York City raided the Stonewall Inn, a seedy Greenwich Village bar known to cater to homosexuals.

Many times before police had arrested men at the Stonewall who they observed dancing together, wearing women's clothing or touching one another.

But on the night of June 27, 1969, the arresting officers were met with punches, kicks and bottles thrown by patrons who resented what they saw as harassment by the police.

Word of the incident quickly spread through the Big Apple's gay community. In a sign of the times, the story in the next day's New York Daily News read, "Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad."

Today the Stonewall Riots are widely accepted as the birth of the modern gay rights movement.

The incident serves as the opening chapter of Out for Good, an engaging account of what its authors call the last great struggle for civil rights in America this century: the push for civil rights for gays and lesbians.

With a broad brush, and smart storytelling, Adam Nagourney and Dudley Clendinen, both writers for The New York Times, show the growth of the American gay rights movement in the 30 years since Stonewall.

Thoroughly researched, the story unfolds in episodes taken from cities around the country: New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Miami.

They offer rich insider detail of the political maneuvering over homosexuality, such as the 1973 fight to strike homosexuality from a list of mental disorders compiled by the American Psychiatric Association, and Anita Bryant's successful campaign to overturn Dade County's ban on anti-gay discrimination. The latter was a pivotal battle that sparked not only greater participation by gays nationwide in mainstream politics but also breathed new life into the religious right, which organized itself to undo political advances by gays at all levels of government.

But Out for Good is unfortunately thin on showing how the movement's successes have reshaped American culture, pushing it toward acceptance of open homosexuals as co-workers, as elected political leaders and judges, as television and movie stars, as sports icons, as church leaders -- even as adoptive parents.

That is a more nuanced, slightly tougher tale to tell because it cannot be solely measured in votes cast in the U.S. Supreme Court or Congress. Readers looking for insight into these social changes will be unsatisfied with Out for Good -- which sticks to a fault to the story of such groups as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign.

That said, Out for Good does offer good political insight --and does so in an engaging way.

Nagourney and Clendinen point out the shaping of homosexuals into a political force was no easy feat.

It was a movement that from the beginning was torn over whether to focus on sexual liberation or civil rights, over differences between gay men and lesbians, blacks and whites, Hispanics and Anglos, middle class gays and radical students.

Unlike other cultural groups, homosexuals could not band together around a common language, religion, physical appearance or social custom. Unless they declared themselves openly, gays were often unknown to each other and to society at large. They came from all walks of life and political backgrounds: from the wealthy and educated to the working poor. Lesbian women with children faced different issues from gay men who had none. About the only reality all homosexuals shared was rejection from the larger society.

These differences often surfaced as fierce infighting within the gay rights movement: Lesbians walked out on gay men they viewed as sexist and sex-obsessed, middle class white men broke ranks with a gay movement they viewed as too radical and politically ineffective.

Then finally, as the movement began to coalesce in the early 1980s, its leaders and much of its rank and file membership was decimated by AIDS.

The sudden emergence of the killer disease caught newly organized gays off guard. The epidemic struck fear among gay leadership even as it seemed to bolster gay opponents who said it signaled divine retribution for sexual sin and who used it to justify anti-gay discrimination.

AIDS quickly overwhelmed the gay rights agenda as thousands died. Activists focused on getting the federal government and the medical industry to respond to the epidemic.

Amid the devastation, Nagourney and Clendinen point to a silver lining: the maturity of the gay rights movement, which survived -- as well as that of the general public, who began to sympathize with gay victims of the disease.

The story that begins with Stonewall ends with an emotional speech in 1992 by presidential candidate Bill Clinton to a gay lobby group in Los Angeles. In it, Clinton promised to end the ban on gays in the military.

While Clinton fell short of fulfilling that promise, his speech held greater significance. Only a generation before, it had been unthinkable that a serious contender for president of the United States would appear before a group of homosexuals, publicly defend their rights and make a direct appeal for their votes.

Say Nagourney and Clendinen: "It seems likely that the movement for gay identity and gay rights has come further and faster, in terms of change, than any other that has gone before it in this nation."

Jody A. Benjamin can be reached at jbenjamin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4530.